Re: [gentoo-dev] Usage of cp -i to prevent overwriting upstream files

[Ferris McCormick]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:50:47 +0100
Jan Kundrát <jkt@g.o> wrote:

> Ferris McCormick wrote:
> > 'cp -i' will at least ask a question, and I find that marginally better
> > --- it's confusing, but at least it says something.  But it seems to me
> > that if we hit this case, no one (including the package owner) knows
> > which .xml file to use, so stopping the build makes sense, but do it
> > with some message that explains exactly what is going on.
>
> The problem is that the whole build won't *abort*, but rather become
> interactive.
>
> I for one think that having it die (in the unlikely case that s
> developer made a mistake) is better than letting it hang indefinitely
> (in the unlikely case that a developer made a mistake) :).

That's what I meant by "stopping the build".  My concern is that when
we do stop the build, we do it with some useful error message and make
it clear that the user did not screw up and so should do something to
fix it.  ("die file exists" looks to me like an attempt to ask the user
to fix something, not an ebuild problem.)

As I think about it, I am not sure how this could happen.  It would
either be an ebuild that the package owner never tried or a change in
the source file.  And why wouldn't a change in the source file cause an
immediate termination because the length would suddenly be wrong?  And
if the now-upstream-supplied build.xml file is different from the one
the developer put together, wouldn't you probably want a revision bump
at that point?
>  Think about
> insane users setting up cronjobs and what not...
>
> Cheers,
> -jkt
>
> --
> cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth
>
Clearly, I misspoke when I said I'd not respond further. :)

Regards,
Ferris
--
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)